How to Identify Narcissists and Other Problematic People

f you are an outside observer trying to do narcissist spotting on behalf of a loved family member or friend, you face an uphill struggle.

That’s because narcissists hide well.

The best way to identify narcissists come in two bullet points

1. context is necessary to identify their lies and falsehoods

2. familiarity with narcissist behaviors is necessary to pattern match

Without sufficient quantities of both these bullet points, it’s an uphill struggle.

But I can share a quick and dirty trick that anyone can use to watch out for a problematic individual. Note, I didn’t say narcissist, because that requires much much more.

But it’s still a very good thing to spot a problematic individual early, because they’re problematic, and will continually create problems over nothing.

Problems reduce the quality of life, creating dramas and problems is senseless because it ruins life over nothing. And that’s why we should avoid problematic individuals, whether they also happen to be NPD or not.

This means you do not need a full psychological diagnosis from the DSM. You can do it right here. Spotting problematic individuals is easy and doesn’t require professional certification.

And highly rewarding, because it promises you higher quality of life if done correctly.

So here’s what you look for in a problematic individual.

Do their positive sounding words contradict their actions?

All contradictions are red flags. Contradictions are bad because people need to be sufficiently coherent and predictable in order not to end up inadvertently betraying our trust.

It’s a lot like driving and traffic. Cars need to be predictable, turning signals, stopping at traffic lights, slowing down at turns, both headlights working (so as not to give off the impression that it’s a motorcycle). When cars fail to be predictable, accidents happen. Erratic driving is responsible for most accidents. That’s why alcohol is such a big nono.

All contradictions are bad. But there is a special class of contradictions which is the worst of them all, and that is positive words contradicted by actions. The potential implication is that nothing positive they say could be trusted.

This is extremely contradictory. Something is extremely fishy here. That’s the kind of contradiction I’m talking about. Look for these. They tend to be highly rewarding bread crumbs to follow.

Contradictions only come from two things

1. they’re honest mistakes

2. it means there’s something wrong with someone’s character

All problematic people exhibit consistent contradictions, because problematic people all have one thing in common, character deficits that fall below a certain healthy threshold. Character deficits are responsible for their consistent contradictions.

Using the ‘consistently compliment but never upvote’ model, we can extend it to more practical matters, like these

covenant breaker (not keep promises but makes them frequently)

playa (says sweet words that are instantly forgotten to serve nefarious agendas)

fair weather friend (they don’t know why they stick around you, they’re not even sure they want to be your friend)

liar, habitual white liar (white lies) or thinks in falsehoods (says meaningless untruths constantly to blend into circumstances)

salesperson mentality (does not bother to confirm with engineering to find out if the product has these capabilities before enthusiastically promoting said capabilities)

bad give and take (user, exploiter, unfairness)

low impulse control (zero accountability)

does not like you but pretends to like you (it’s very irritating when you can see right through them)

flaky

fake

If you practice watching for accountability violations constantly, you will inevitably become a more difficult person to interact with.

It would be definitely easier to overlook inconsistencies, contradictions, violations, etc. You get along with a lot more people that way.

But if you kept doing that, problematic individuals will slip through your lax system.

And that’s the thing we are trying to avoid.

Narcissists, for the ruin they bring from being allowed into your life, are worth alienating 50 fair weather friends or colleagues you will never meet again after you changed jobs.

In effect, it is more important to not let a single problematic individual slip through your net than to have 200 more acquaintances or outer circle people mildly like you (or 1000 more Facebook friends).

Alienating outside circle people is fine. There are far worse things in life than being less popular with inconsistent people. One of them is problematic individuals.

When we were young and naive, and we thought the world was all adventure and loving folk, we would find such a philosophy harsh and incomprehensible (yes, that would include me too).

But then we grew older and discovered that highly disagreeable people also walk the streets.

And that’s when we discovered the benefit of being (correctly) judgemental.

“O, swear not by the moon, th’ inconstant moon,

That monthly changes in her circle orb,

Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.”

― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/76547-o-swear-not-by-the-moon-th-inconstant-moon-that